CHARLES VICTOIRE FRÉDÉRIC MOENCH

(1784 / 1864)

CHARLES VICTOIRE FREDERIC MOENCH Paris, France (1784 / 1864) "Love and Fidelity", 1827

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. Provenance: Private Spanish collection. Acquired by the family of the current owner in 1951 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris (Inscription on the reverse of the work indicating this provenance). Bibliography: BENEZIT, E., Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, edited by Jacques Busse, Gründ, 1999, vol. IX, p. 694. Charles-Victoire-Frederic Moench was a renowned Parisian painter and decorator who practiced various genres such as history painting and portraiture, also dedicating himself throughout his long career to the restoration of works of art and the creation of theatrical sets. Initially trained by his father, Simon-Frederic Moench (1746-1837), he was a pupil of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy (1767-1824), a painter who, although developing a style that foreshadowed Romanticism, remained deeply rooted in the classicism of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). This beautiful painting, Love and Fidelity, is dated 1827, the same year that Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), a leading figure of the new Romantic aesthetic, painted his first major work: The Death of Sardanapalus, causing a great stir in artistic circles. In it, Moench remains faithful to his master's aesthetic, tackling a theme from classical mythology in which precise drawing and restraint continue to prevail over the splashes of color and agitated movement characteristic of Romantic painting. However, as in the works of his master, some features anticipate the new aesthetic, such as the misty landscape in which the scene unfolds, the subtle eroticism of the subject matter, the nudity of one of the figures, and the delicate transparency of the breasts of the woman depicted in the foreground: the goddess Diana. In Roman mythology, Diana was characterized as a virgin and chaste. Keeping herself apart from men, she only allowed maidens in her retinue. Her attributes as goddess of the hunt are visible on the canvas: a bow, a quiver, arrows, and a pair of dogs. She is fully clothed and, with a modest gesture, avoids dialogue with the viewer, directing her gaze to the ground. The nude female figure behind Diana is Venus, goddess of love, beauty, and desire. She is accompanied by her son Cupid, who, carrying a bow in one hand, tries unsuccessfully to comfort the chaste Diana and draw her into his world of passions and carnal desires. The artwork presents two opposing forces: the passionate love embodied by Venus and Cupid versus the chastity and fidelity of Diana. Dimensions: 237 x 178 cm.